Two months after opening, Allentown's PPL Center is up for two worldwide awards

Just two months after opening, Allentown’s new PPL Center is getting industry attention – and accolades, with nominations for two prestigious industry awards.

It is among four nominees as Best New Major Concert Venue in the world by concert tour industry trade publication Pollstar.

And Dave Scott, president of sports and entertainment company Comcast-Spectacor – which runs the PPL Center -- has been nominated for the Hall of Headlines Award given by Venues Today, a magazine covering the live entertainment industry.

The nomination is for the “home run” approach Comcast-Spectacor uses at the center – having all four of its corporate entities operate there. The Hall of Headlines Award honors “the headline-making individuals that impacted the industry.”

The $177 million PPL Center at Seventh and Hamilton streets opened Sept. 12 with a sold-out concert by Hall of Fame rock group The Eagles. It has had two concerts since: Tom Petty played a nearly sold-out show on Sept. 16 and classic metal rockers Judas Priest played Oct. 15.

The arena also is the home of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms minor league hockey team and has hosted a Professional Bull Riders event and the Harlem Globetrotters. There will be a college men's basketball game between Penn State and Drexel on Dec. 20.

According to Pollstar, its nominees are selected by an anonymous collection of 216 promoters, agents, managers and other touring professional. They cannot nominate themselves or their clients, Pollstar says.

“It’s an honor for us to be in some of the company that we are with this nomination from Pollstar,” PPL Center General Manager Gunnar Fox said. “It’s really a credit to the staff that we’ve established locally. It also has a lot to do with the relationships and the reputation that Comcast-Spectacor has throughout the concert industry.

“People know what to expect, touring acts know what to expect, when they’re going into a Comcast-Spectacor-managed facility. And for a home-run building like the PPL Center, people know from top to bottom – from the management of the arena, the ticketing system, the food-and-beverage … that they’re getting a first-class operation.”

The 10,000-capacity hockey arena and event center is the smallest of this year’s Pollstar Best New Major Concert Venue nominees.

The others are the 12,000-seat Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., which opened Sept. 17; the 13,000-capacityThe SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland, which opened Sept. 30, 2013; and the 17,500-capacity Forum in Inglewood, Calif., which underwent $23.5 million in renovations and reopened with six concerts by the Eagles in January.

“That’s even more of an honor,” Fox said. “The markets that those buildings are in, it’s really good company to be in. We couldn’t be more pleased to receive a nomination like this.”

The winner will be chosen by subscribers’ online voting, which ends Dec. 18. Winners are announced in February.

Last year’s Best New Concert Venue was won by the 14,000-capacity Austin360 Amphitheater in Austin, Texas.

Venues Today made Comcast-Spectacor’s Scott one of five nominees.

“The third-largest city in Pennsylvania had not had an arena until Comcast-Spectacor landed four contracts to provide management and booking services (Global Spectrum); food and beverage concessions and catering services (Ovations Food Services); ticketing (Paciolan); and naming rights and advertising sales (Front Row Marketing Services),” the magazine says.

“The venue is an example of Scott's goal for the company since taking over in December 2013 – to ‘integrate our go-to-market strategy across all products’ as OneComcast-Spectacor.”

Scott is among five nominees for Venue Today’s Hall of Headlines award. Others area Mike Cerha, vice president of venues and entertainment for OSEG for TD Place in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; and Chief Executive John Langford and Director of Live Entertainment Peter Duthie for SSE Hydro.

Also, Ryan Murphy, general manager of the St. Augustine (Fla.) Amphitheatre; and Doug Thornton, executive vice president of SMG for management of the new Minnesota Vikings Stadium.

The nominations “are huge,” said John Page, president of Global Spectrum, the venue-management arm of Comcast. “It’s really an affirmation of the concept of OneComcast-Spectacor. When you look at the ability to really leverage the synergy of all the companies that are involved – in particular Allentown.

“It really goes well to serve our partners in the arena project, the citizens of the community to deliver not only great service but great events – just overall great opportunities to do everything that was behind the vision of building that building.”

“We’re pleased to have the nomination and it really goes to show that when we are able to get all of our companies in one facility, everybody benefits.”

Scott, who took over Comcast-Spectacor in 2013 after 21 years on the cable side of Comcast, said that from the beginning he was looking to take a different approach by bundling the companies into “home run” buildings.

The approach also is used at PPL Park, the soccer stadium in Chester; the Budweiser Event Center in Colorado; and other Comcast-Spectacor facilities.

“We think that’s the best way we can bring more value to our clients and our fans at a better price,” Scott said in an interview before PPL Center opened. “We’ve just done very well by having all the management kind of aligned – where you’ve got that kind of leadership strength in one facility.”

For example, he said, Comcast has centralized its purchasing arm across all its companies, “so you really have all of these big contracts – buying insurance to buying food at Ovations. Every company runs through the same funnel, so we really get the full advantage of levering our size and scale, and can bring some of those savings to the client.”

Important for PPL Center is the talent-booking side of that, Scott said.

“Just the location of Allentown near Philly [makes it] an extension of the whole Philadelphia region,” he said. “We book a lot of events that come through the Wells Fargo Center. So you get a lot of economies doing it this way, so we can route big acts and events in Philadelphia all the way to Atlantic City and back to Allentown. So there will be a lot of synergy on the booking side that we’ll be able to keep that part of the arena going well.”

John Page, president of Global Spectrum, the venue-management arm of Comcast, said the nominations are “a great honor.”

“Traditionally , it’s the larger markets that get all the credibility,” Page said. “But by having the machine of Comcast-Spectacor, we can really help promote a venue in a community like Allentown to give it the national recognition that it deserves.”

The fact that the accolades come so soon after PPL Center opened just underscores that, Page says.

“I think a lot of it’s been the build-up. You look at the opening with the events that we’ve been able to have – the Eagles, Tom Petty, the Phantoms – everything that’s been there and the slate of shows that are continuing to go on sale and be booked there, it’s a real credit to the marketplace to be able to support that.”